The problem with supporting Windows

I guess many Linux users know the problem that some Windows software, they would like to use on Linux, isn’t ported for some reason like a too small market etc. What’s funny is that the problem also exists in the other direction, although for totally different reasons.

The problem really showed in recent development of Krita. For a long time Krita was only available for Linux and other Unix-like systems, but in the last time we got more and more requests from users for a Windows version. So we want to support Krita on Windows. Since we are using Qt and KDE ported to Windows shouldn’t be a big issue, right? Well not exactly, while these libraries take most of the work away the port still needs continued maintenance. To make a good user experience you need some developer(s) working on Windows to iron out the platform specific problems.

Which leads us to the main problem: We simply don’t have any Windows developers. My impression is that by now almost all open source developers are working on Linux and are not particularly interested to work on Windows on volunteer basis. Working on Windows simply isn’t fun. Unlike for conventional software development the mere mass of users on a platform doesn’t provide any advantage to support it.

How to solve the problem? Easiest would of course be that we find a few volunteers that have fun working on Windows. Something that I think is not very likely. Only alternative is to pay someone to work full time on it, which of course means that Windows users would need to pay a few euros (at least on average).

By the way, the Mac OS version is also affected by a similar problem. No Krita developer has a Mac anymore, so development on that platform has ceased.

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This goes a bit into a different direction, but I would also consider not porting at all. I do not want to start an OS war, but I think this is a good explanation for the motivation: http://www.fefe.de/nowindows/

Being the Tomahawk Windows dude, I exactly know what you’re talking about :-)

Noone of us developers is really using Windows and I’m cross-compiling on Linux, which is quite handy to keep it compiling but that really doesn’t make you notice runtime bugs. We do need developers on Windows too, but noone in a sane state of mind wants to develop there.. ;-)

What I can tell tho is that supporting Windows (or a third – besides OSX – not-so-close-to-Linux platform in general greatly) helped to improve our code in C++ just as in cmake.. It’s a hard road to go down, but in our opinion it certainly pays off if you find a monkey to do the work :P

@Mathias: I see the point Fefe has, but I disagree.. noone should be forced to switch away from the operating system/environment he feels comfortable with.. I only want to force everyone to use open standards that guarantee interoperability – everything else is no better than M$ or Apple :-)

> KO can’t effort to let developers work on Krita for free.
> They have to make money from it, to feed the developers.
> So they either need a paying customer or sell the binary.

So, then sell them. I don’t see any problem with putting the Calligra apps on Windows Store and AppUp. Sell each app’s Windows version for 3 bucks or whatever seems fit.
Same with OSX and the Mac App Store and in the futue even Calligra Active for Android in Google Play.

An alternative could be to add an option (!) “Display ads to support development”.

There are endless ways to generate a revenue stream for Windows and OSX.

I was investigating intel app-up and their kickstarter program last week, in fact. Sven sort of pre-empted me, because I had an almost identical blog text ready where I investigated several ways of getting money for funding windows development of Krita :-)

In my view, in order to sell successfully a Windows version you need:
– a *very* good software to propose(which Krita 2.4 in part already is!)
– a great potential user-base (willing to buy it).
Regarding this second point, I suppose Krita is not enough widespread on Windows at present.
Needless to say, the Calligra version of Krita 2.4 delivered lately is very usueful to fill this gap in the long run :-)

In my opinion, right now, the best would be to concentrate all developers’ efforts on Linux, until the release of Krita 2.5
Krita 2.5 is going be more stable and naturally more powerful (maybe with even some of this year’s Gsoc included in it)

In this frame-time the current Windows version of Krita 2.4(which is already very good) would serve for spreading the news on Windows about the “real” upcoming version on sale (the 2.5 one) :-)

I’ve been ironing out the usability bugs on a few programs ported to Linux (the developer was using MacOSX). It always depends on what the developers use. Linux seems to be the preferred choice of most OSS developers.

I’m often cross compiling and porting between Windows and Linux, and I have to say that supporting Windows is a [pain], especially when it comes to libraries or pathing and/or 3rd party libraries which need to be compiled, often don’t (even claming to support windows).

Maybe I’m just dumb as a nut and that’s why it costs me hours and days (as taglib on windows took me a whole weekend), but for me as a developer where I just want the library and tools (such as cmake) to be there and found … it’s annoying.

I just tested on my Windows PC and I experienced many Wow moments that I haven’t experienced since I discovered canvas rotation with MyPaint :)

I was really impressed when I discovered the paint with brushes using dynamic movements and the mirror features. I know that I’m only scratching the surface of what Krita is capable of, but I think I’m already hooked.

I’m not a Windows developer, but I used to program in Visual Studio C++ when I was in the university, so maybe I can help in something, investigating, compiling, etc.

Finally, thanks for porting and investing in Krita for Windows, I know that I’m not the only one that appreciates this, and hopefully when Krita gets more mature and popular on Windows, many users like me, will buy the training DVDs, test the betas, report bugs, and all things related Krita :)